Nigerian immigrants 'contribute more' to UK

The belief that immigrants from Nigeria and other parts of the world are a drain on the UK economy has been disproved in a new report by University College London’s Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration.

The UK government has been trying to curb immigration with the belief that foreigners who settle in the country are a burden to taxpayers.

In recent years, there has been a deliberate policy to cut the number of those issued with visas from Nigeria and other developing countries.

Although the UK cannot curb immigration from Eastern Europe because of the European Union free-movement charter, there has been a lot of concern over immigrants from what is known as “New Europe”.

The new report, authored by Christian Dustmann and Tommaso Frattini, says immigrants from Nigeria and the rest of the world contributed £5bn in taxes than they took in benefits between 2000 and 2011.

This calculation takes into account two types of immigrants’ proportionate share of all public service costs: the “total cost” ─ those that increase when the population increases, such as health and education; and the “fixed cost” ─ those that remain constant, such as expenditure on the armed forces and defence.

If the fixed cost is removed, the contributions of Nigerians and the rest of the world would rise to £20.5bn.

Immigrants from “New Europe” ─ the 10 countries, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, that joined EU since 2004 ─ contributed £4.96bn more in taxes than they took in benefits in the same period.

If the “fixed cost” is also removed, their contributions would rise to  £10.5bn.

This contrasts sharply with the contributions of the “native British” who collected £617bn more in benefits than the taxes they paid at “total cost” or a bigger £679bn if they have to bear all the “fixed cost”.

With or without immigrants, however, the fixed cost will have to be borne by the “natives”.

Immigrants from the richer part of Europe ─ or Western Europe ─ contributed £15bn at total cost or or £18bn without the “fixed cost”.

This is the first time a research of this nature has disproved popular belief in the UK that immigrants are an economic burden.

Dustmann, a professor and co-author of the study, said: “A key concern of the public debate on migration is whether immigrants contribute their fair share to the tax and welfare systems. Our new analysis draws a positive picture of the overall fiscal contribution made by recent immigrant cohorts, particularly of immigrants arriving from the EU.”

But the report was criticised as “shallow” by David Green of the centre-right thinktank, Civitas.

“People who migrate tend to be young, better educated and energetic. They make good employees here but they are a loss to their own country. If other European countries fail to prosper because their brightest and best have travelled to the UK, we are all worse off,” he said.

He said the survey also disregarded the waste of human capital involved in too many university migrants working as baristas or waiters.